Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

Porkchop Express’s Fault Lines & Good Times just dropped, and Thursday night’s CD release party was a rockin’ good time. Rumor has it they will be the first opening band for Def Leppard’s SF/Mtn View show, along with Cheap Trick and Poison. THAT would be HUGE.

My dad is the youngest of 10 kids. My grandmother survived her husband more than 40 years. She never remarried. While she rolled her own cigarettes and drank dark beer every day, she lived for more than a century. She loved life. On her 102nd birthday, she insisted she was 110 and that no one can prove her wrong. She lived most of her life in a provincial town in the Philippines. Even when a 3 bedroom house was built on her land, she insisted on spending most of her indoor time in her bamboo nipa hut built on stilts. I will write more about her in the future.

BAMBOO is not a tree, it’s grass

Bamboo is fast-growing and durable. Some can grow up to 24 inches per day. It can be harvested in 3 years to make hardwood, unlike 15 years for most trees. There are close to 1,000 species of bamboo that can be found around the world in diverse regions – from cold mountains to hot tropics. Many of us may see bamboo as garden decor, but it’s also extensively used as building material and a food source.

Orthodox rapper Y-Love and beatbox superstar Yuri Lane create all their music non-instrumentally. Here is a clip from an improvised piece filmed on a handheld at their CD release party for Count It, their Sefira album. (From youtube channel – http://www.youtube.com/user/modular)

Some of you may know I studied the Classics at UCLA—ancient Greek art, architecture and literature. One of my favorite stories is told in Plato’s Symposium. The comic playwright Aristophanes tells the story of the Origin of Love.

In John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig & the Angry Inch, they put it to music and animate it. It’s pretty awesome. I also found a video where someone illustrates the story on the actual pages of a Penguin paperback.

I’m coming out of my cage
And I’ve been doing just fine
Gotta gotta gotta be down
Because I WANT IT ALL …

I just can’t look its killing me
And taking control
Jealousy, turning saints into the sea
Swimming through sick lullabies
Choking on your alibi
But it’s just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes …

2007 flew by so quickly—didn’t it? … Here to help us ROCKET! the new year is my God son JACOB in a tribute to his dad’s all-time favorite rock guitarist — Phil Collen from Def Leppard. (See photo of Alexis and Phil below)

Tomorrow (Jan 3rd) is a very special day. Big Jake will celbrate his 1st birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BOY!